A Universal Lament for the Children of the Earth (corrrected; I first wrote this in a fit)

Oh God, our Creator, Designer, Law-giver, Revelator, Sustainer, Director, Judge

of all things, in heaven and earth and under the earth.

Oh Jesus, the Logos from Eternity, oh Jesus, Incarnate Logos in history,

full of grace and truth and virtue in perfection.

Light from light,

yet the darkness did not comprehend,

neither did it overcome

You.

A singular Man, born to die

the death no one else every died or could die,

even death on a Cross,

not by accident, happenstance or impersonal historical necessity

(Hegel be damned).

A man of sorrows and permeated with grief,

crushing disappointment,

frustration,

and lament upon lament for this wounded and wounding world

of his own making--and remaking.

Oh Holy Spirit, so present, yet so alien in this world of woe

and hidden.

Aching wonder, we feel it deep.

Spirit of truth...so often quenched and grieved by lies, ignorance, and

stupefaction.

Triune God!

Triume God!

Triunie God!

Hear our prayer, whispered, screamed, signed from within our mortal frame.

Hear our prayer, when we can muster one or two, between signs, moans, and screams

and Silences too deep to express.

We lament our lot,

our loss,

our languishing between the ideal

and the real.

Between joy fulfilled

and hope deferred.

Between virtue tasted

and vice bitter and acidic.

Between restoration

and dejection.

Between beauty

and ashes.

Between the perfect notes

and the botched chords.

Between love lovingly offered

and love stomped on by self, ego, flesh.

Oh Triune God of compassion,

of patience,

of mercy,

of forgiveness through blood and body.

--and of Judgment.

We call out to you,

not in goodness, righteousness, or Christ-like faith,

but in sickness, lifelessness,

near dereliction, destitution, derangement.

We hope for a listening heaven

An open heart above

A future with more grace

more hope,

more love,

more trusting knowledge.

We lament to the bone.

We lament in the soul.

We lament in the moment.

We lament for yesterday and today and tomorrow,

but not for Tomorrow.

Yet we pray that all of our pained yearnings may find

their home in
The One True God:

more true than our lies.

More true than our fears.

More good than our evils.

More full of grace, than we are full of sin.

We lament our state

Our souls are sick and hungry and noisy and weary.

We offer this catastrophe to you,

in hope of an eventual apocalypse of

Ecstasy.

But not without the nail-driven hands,

the hole in the side

The God with wounds, resurrected, but remembered for eternity.

yet with joy set before him.

Darkness is so often our closest friend.

We bring this bitter friend before our better Friend.

Heal him, and us, of God of the scars, wounds, and resurrection.

Turn our laments into

benedictions, doxologies, and oblations---

...

...

...

soon, lest we die.